US Vice President says public perception may turn against games following school shootings.

Following the tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook, US Vice President Joe Biden has issued a veiled warning to the games industry.

During a roundtable discussion with representatives from the video games industry, observers reported that under his genial tone the gaff-prone politician urged games makers to exercise more restraint.

"He said that even though you had the Supreme Court ruling go your way... just because you have that on your side doesn't mean you have public opinion on your side," attendee Cheryl K. Olson reported to Gamasutra.

Despite this, the US government seemed resolute to stay out of the way of games companies in this meeting that follows a series of consultations to develop advice for new gun crime policies.

"He said upfront that he didn't think the evidence he'd seen showed a link between violent video games and real life violence," Ms Olson added.

"And he said even if the research were to show a link, it would be a tiny influence compared to the influence of the other factors he was looking at."

The meeting, attended by industry bigwigs such as EA CEO John Riccitiello (publisher of Medal of Honor Warfighter and Army of TWO) and former Epic Games boss Mike Capps (developer of Gears of War and Unreal Tournament), among others, saw the industry tasked with changing its image.

According to analysts on the scene, this surprised industry leaders who expected to have to make a robust defence of gaming's perceived psychological effects.

James Lee

James Lee is a freelance writer and analyst with extensive experience in the technology, media and games sectors. For the past few years he has provided content for internationally published industry reports, SEO companies and a variety of news-focused websites. Prior to this, James was responsible for covering news and producing in-depth features for GamesIndustry.biz while occasionally contributing to its sister-site. Eurogamer.net. In addition to this he has contributed to other notable sites such as CVG.co.uk, Edge-Online and DigitalSpy.